Surveillance systems are in everyday use at the present time, most commonly exemplified by the video camera focused on the tellers window at a bank or the eye-in-the-sky camera positioned over each blackjack table at a gambling casino to enable casino personnel to observe the dealing below to spot possible cheating or card counting. Such television cameras are, however, fully exposed to the view of those who may enter the bank, or even a convenience store, with a nefarious purpose. As a consequence, it is a not unusual occurrence for the perpetrator of an act to destroy the video camera or at least to remove the recording medium from the camera and thereby avoid the visual recognition provided by the camera and its medium.
At a more sophisticated level, surveillance systems have been mounted in police cars and other vehicles. Such a system includes a camera and a control head mounted within the vehicle, as well as a video recorder secured within the vehicle at an accessible location, for example, in the trunk of the car. When a police officer stops a motorist, the surveillance system is manually or automatically activated so that many details of the stop, including the actions of the motorist and the officer, are recorded for later inspection.
A common difficulty with all such systems, however, is the fact that the camera or the control head, or even the eye-in-the-sky casino device have photographic means that is either readily self-apparent or can be discovered with advance knowledge of the system or with modest effort. Thus, all such systems are subject either to destruction of the system or a camera part thereof, or to the temporary evasion of the system, for example, by simply throwing a piece of cloth over the camera or its control head.
It is, therefore, a primary object of the present invention to provide a surveillance system in which the means photographing the scene is so well disguised that it is highly unlikely to be discovered by a perpetrator at the scene, and thereby subject to destruction or disablement.
It is another object of my invention to provide a surveillance system that is not only well camouflaged but in which the recording medium is subject to a plurality of disguised locations, so that the knowledge of a perpetrator of the location of one such camouflaged device will not lead to the obvious discovery of other such devices.